Fabrication of PLGA nanoparticles with a fluidic nanoprecipitation system

Xie Hui, Smith

Description

Particle size is a key feature in determining performance of nanoparticles as drug carriers because it influences circulating half-life, cellular uptake and biodistribution. Because the size of particles has such a major impact on their performance, the uniformity of the particle population is also a significant factor. Particles comprised of the polymer poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) are widely studied as therapeutic delivery vehicles because they are biodegradable and biocompatible. In fact, microparticles comprised of PLGA are already approved for drug delivery. Unfortunately, PLGA nanoparticles prepared by conventional methods usually lack uniformity. We developed a novel Fluidic NanoPrecipitation System (FNPS) to fabricate highly uniform PLGA particles. Several parameters can be fine-tuned to generate particles of various sizes.

Informations

• Publié par: biomed
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 540
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Xie and SmithJournal of Nanobiotechnology2010,8:18 http://www.jnanobiotechnology.com/content/8/1/18

R E S E A R C H

Fabrication of PLGA nanoparticles nanoprecipitation system * Hui Xie, Jeffrey W Smith

with

a

Open Access

fluidic

Abstract Particle size is a key feature in determining performance of nanoparticles as drug carriers because it influences cir culating halflife, cellular uptake and biodistribution. Because the size of particles has such a major impact on their performance, the uniformity of the particle population is also a significant factor. Particles comprised of the poly mer poly(lacticcoglycolic acid) (PLGA) are widely studied as therapeutic delivery vehicles because they are biode gradable and biocompatible. In fact, microparticles comprised of PLGA are already approved for drug delivery. Unfortunately, PLGA nanoparticles prepared by conventional methods usually lack uniformity. We developed a novel Fluidic NanoPrecipitation System (FNPS) to fabricate highly uniform PLGA particles. Several parameters can be finetuned to generate particles of various sizes.

Background Particles comprised of the polymer poly(lacticcoglyco lic acid) (PLGA) are widely studied as therapeutic deliv ery vehicles because they are biodegradable [1] and biocompatible [24]. In fact, microparticles comprised of PLGA are already approved for establishing sustained release of leuprolide (Lupron Depot) and triptorelin (Trelstar). Similar PLGA particles also show promise as a delivery vehicle for proteins [5,6], siRNA [7], and for presenting antigens to dendritic cells for vaccination [810]. It is also becoming clear that PLGA particles offer considerable flexibility in choosing a route of deliv ery because they have proven to be effective when injected intramuscularly [11,12], when delivered via inhalation [1315], and recent results indicate that they also have promise for oral delivery of drugs and antigens [1619]. Particle size is one of the key features in determining performance because it influences circulating halflife, cellular uptake and biodistribution [2022]. The kinetic aspects of drug release are also strongly influenced by particle size [2325]. Early interest in drugloaded parti cles centered on their application as vehicles for sus tained drug release, but now there is great interest in using similar particles for targeting the delivery of drugs to specific tissues, vascular beds, and cells. For the latter

* Correspondence: [e-mail] SanfordBurnham Medical Research Institute, 10901 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037 USA

application smaller particles, particularly those in the range of ~100 nm, are likely to be advantageous because they are taken up by cells at rates 15 to 250 fold greater than micron size particles [26]. This difference in the rate of uptake can be the distinction between specific and nonspecific uptake. For example, PLGA nanoparti cles targeted to dendritic cells with an antibody are taken up specifically, but microparticles targeted with the same antibody are taken up nonspecifically [8]. The uniformity of the particle population is also a significant factor in performance. Preparations of particles that are highly uniform will exhibit more consistent biodistribu tion, cellular uptake, and drug release. Preparations of particles lacking uniformity will exhibit variance in all of these parameters, making it difficult to draw conclusions about which subset of the particle population is respon sible for biological effect. There are many different methods of fabricating solid polymeric particles. Gas flow focusing [27] and electro spray [28,29] can be used to fabricate PLGA microparti cles with uniform sizes but these approaches have not been widely used to generate nanoparticles. Several sol ventbased methods can be used to make polymeric nanoparticles including interfacial polymerization [30], the evaporation of emulsions [31] and nanoprecipitation [32]. In most cases however, these flow based approaches lack precise control at the macro level, so they yield particles with a broad size distribution. Con sequently, extra steps such as filtration or centrifugation

© 2010 Xie and Smith; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.